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07 DECEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: WWM) – Over 100 Christians have been arrested in Iran in the past week and nearly 150 in the past month, as part of the government’s attempt to “warn” Christians against proselytising over Christmas, according to the advocacy director of religious freedom charity Article 18. Mansour Borji called the number of arrests…

06 DECEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: REUTERS) – President Emmanuel Macron’s government is dropping further fuel-tax hikes in next year’s budget in the face of protests across France over living costs, his prime minister said on Wednesday, a day after announcing their suspension for six months. The Macron administration is struggling to defuse the anger driving the “yellow…

By Cherolyn Amery, Alex Pollock and Donnelly McCleland News outlets around the world bombard their audience with stories of war, disaster and famine. Seldom do stories of peace and hope make the headlines, and if they do, they usually disappear quickly, or commentators and analysts quickly provide an alternative outlook, focusing on what could…

By Andrew Richards 2018 Overview 2018 saw world powers battling it out in proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, expanding the fight through cyber warfare and even trying to force each other into submission by means of a trade war. Arguably, Turkey made the biggest geopolitical shift in the Middle East as the NATO…

By Donnelly McCleland, Alex Pollock and Cherolyn Amery CROWN PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN – The Man Who Would Be King Since his meteoric rise to power in 2015, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has enjoyed favourable coverage in the international media, with a major focus on his economic and social reforms in…

05 DECEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: INDEPENDENT) – Yemen’s recognised government and the Houthi rebels have agreed to a massive prisoner swap to boost UN efforts for a ceasefire deal, as a rebel delegation flew to Sweden for a fresh round of peace talks. The agreement was struck by UN envoy Martin Griffiths, who was in the rebel-held capital Sana’a on…

04 DECEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: GUARDIAN) – The World Health Organization is creating a panel to study the implications of gene editing after a Chinese scientist controversially claimed to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies. “It cannot just be done without clear guidelines,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the UN health agency, said in Geneva….

03 DECEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: REUTERS) – Many delegates from the world’s 20 largest economies arrived at a summit in Argentina this week determined to clinch an agreement to reform the global trade system, pushed to a breaking point by tensions between the United States and China. To do so, they had to bow to U.S. and…

“‘What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered,…

30 NOVEMBER 2018 (SOURCE: BBC) – The stakes are high at this week’s G20 summit, where President Trump is due to meet China’s President Xi Jinping. Hopes that the meeting could open the way for a deal over trade between the two countries have been undermined by recent threats by the US president. Only days before…